Turn on your cell phone and the screen lights up for you to see. Flip a switch and a room turns from dark to bright. Decorate your home with winter holiday candles and lights, or watch fireworks light up the sky on July 4th...Light and light-based technologies affect every day and nearly every part of our lives. Often we take light for granted, but in 2015 the world will be paying a lot more attention during the International Year of Light and Light-Based Technologies.
Harnessing light has revolutionized science, education, medicine, communication, engineering, recreation and all of human survival today. You can explore the power of light and light-based technologies in hundreds of Howtosmile.org activities. Discover the most important form of energy in our world in What is Light, by examining incandescence and luminescence, fluorescence and phosphorescence, and chemiluminescence and bioluminescence.
Want to reveal the colors in natural light, or with light-based technology? The Release the Rainbow activity demonstrates what happens when light is refracted, and how a mirror can amplify the visible spectrum. The Laser Jello activity uses gelatin as a lens to investigate properties of laser light including reflection and refraction, wavelengths, color and lenses.
You can expand your own light learning spectrum from STEM to STEAM by combining art and science, in activities like Polarized Light Mosaic, Iridescent Art, Kaleidoscope, Light Painting and Sun Prints.
Celebrate the new year, and all through the year with International Year of Light teaching resources, including stunning posters about the magic of light. And look even closer at light on the nanoscale with activities and resources from the Nanoscale Informal Science Education network.
[Poster image by Chakrabarty Catarina, (c) Offenburg University]